Major Theft happening at Reliant/Astrodome

Hey all.. I have been working for the Red Cross at the Reliant Center for the past few days. Right now, we are in the process of distributing debit cards and checks to the Katrina evacuees. This is NOT the same as the $2,000.00 FEMA cards. The Red Cross cards work like this: $360 for family of one, $665 for famly of two, $965 for family of three, $1,265 for family of four and $1,565 for family of 5 and up.

Now here is the thing - the MOST we give is $1,565.00. This is how it works: evacuees meet with a caseworker and gives them all their information (head of household, pre-disaster address, names/ages/gender of all members of the family, etc.) The case worker fills out the form, and then gives all the forms to the Data Entry people (me). We data entry people enter all the info into the system, once we put the amount of people in the family, it automatically puts the amount according to the number of people. once we assign the money amount, we click "load" which then activates the card.

UNFORTUNATELY, not ONLY are the evacuees trying to cheat the system by giving false information and/or using their family members more than once to get more money, but today I found out that people working WITH us are theives as well.

Today us data entry people got seperated into groups. One group was still doing data entry for cards (well, they're checks now actually) that still have not been entered into the system. The other group was put to do trouble-shooting and investigation. I chose to do the investigating because it really pisses me off that people are actually trying to commit fraud right under our noses and take money from the Red Cross that does not belong to them. Since day one I have taken my job really serious and I have made sure everyone got the amount of money they were SUPPOSED to receive.

I found sooo much crookedness today, it's unbelieveable. I caught a couple of evacuees using their names or their kids names more than once. or they will change little things like their age. Or they'll be the "head of household" in one family, and be just a member in another. in other words, everytime we input a family into the system, the computer assigns a "case number" to them. each case gets their money whether it be in card or check form. I would find different case numbers for one person. In other words, some people got more than one check/card. I mean WTF?

THEN, the real killer.. I was investigating one family of four that had received $7,525.00!!! The ONLY way they can get money in their cards is from a DATA ENTRY person. I looked into this more and found out that someone originally put the correct amount of $1,265.00 on 9/8/05.. then another someone WITHIN us kept going back to that one case, on different days, and re-loaded it with more money ($1,565.00 four times). Then, the evacuee, coincidentley, cashed out the money right afterwards. When we checked her card, she had used everything but $130.00 so my supervisor immediately de-activated it.

I found another one for $4,695.. again, someone from data entry went back on different days and loaded more money into the card. When we checked the balance that person had $370 left, again we de-activated it right away. I found another one for $4,695, one for $5,060 and one for $9,390. Obviously we have some crooked people working amongst us that is stealing from the Red Cross.

not only that, the laptops we work on? five were stolen.

it just makes me so angry and sad at the same time that this crap is going on. at a time like this, when people like the ones in red cross that are helping them in so many ways AND then giving them money - and people are trying to steal from them and take advantage of them. REALLY pisses me off. too bad most of these people have already gotten away with the money.

sorry this is so long but I just had to rant.. people really suck sometimes. Yes I feel bad, I feel compassionate, and I sympathize with these hurricane victims (or else I would not have been going over there so much to help) but THIS really gets to me. :x :x